Megumi Noda, who is calling herself Nodame, is very talented at playing the piano, but has no ambitions to be a professional pianist, as she wants to become a kindergarten teacher. She does not think bathing or cleaning up her room up is very necessary, regardless of when she tidies up: Her room is always a mess and her waste is stacked on her balcony. While studying at Momogaoka College of Music she meets her neighbor Shinichi Chiaki, who plays the piano and violin perfectly and has the ambition to become conductor, and decides to become his wife. He is only interested in Megumi's talent on the piano and her brilliant aural abilities.
As a small boy Shinichi was the pupil of the famous conductor Sebastiano Viera in Prague, but since he is back in Japan and developed a really big fear of flying, he has to stay at that school. When the famous (and a bit crazy) conductor Franz Stresemann comes to the school and founds a new S-Oke school-orchestra with seemingly untalented students alongside the well established A-Oke orchestra everything begins to change...